"Readable" Enumerations

20 Jun 2013 . posts . Comments
#Java

It is possible to use an enumeration but to also assign a “Human Readable” version of the enumerated values.

public enum AutofillType {
NONE("None"),
CATEGORY\_1("Category 1"),
CATEGORY\_2("Category 2"),
CATEGORY\_3("Category 3");

   public final String name;
   private AutofillType (String name)
   {
      this.name = name;
   }
   @Override
   public String toString() {
      return name;
   }
}
Therefore, you can do something like:

System.out.println(AutofillType.CATEGORY_1);

And get the following output:

Category 1

Instead of:

CATEGORY_1

I found it was useful for creating a 'taxonomy' style, fixed vocabulary and you want to make it easy to put a 'human-readable' version... might not be internationalize-able (and there's probably smarter ways of doing this out there!)...
Me

Anthony is an Australian software engineer and mathematician. As a UTS MBT graduate, Anthony is the technology co-founder of a property and cycling-tech startup and enjoys teaching and learning coding with the Australian startup scene.